This copy is for your personal non-commercial use only. To order presentation-ready copies of Toronto Star content for distribution to colleagues, clients or customers, or inquire about permissions/licensing, please go to: www.TorontoStarReprints.com

Keystone XL looking like a relic from another era: Tim Harper

Connect the dots in the U.S. in recent days and then listen for the slow, rusting out of a discredited pipeline.

While President Barack Obama is trying to shake up the American electorate, the waning demand for Alberta bitumen is Keystone’s strike two, writes Tim Harper. (Sean Kilpatrick / THE CANADIAN PRESS file photo)

OTTAWA—Anyone connecting the dots south of the border this week can really reach only one conclusion.

The Keystone XL pipeline is looking like a relic from the days of George W. Bush, an era that has quickly taken on a prehistoric patina.

Stephen Harper and his Conservatives are trapped in that era.

If Keystone is finally taken off life support, the cause of death will be a lack of demand, a more progressive climate change mentality in the White House and a president in search of a legacy.

Barack Obama accepted the National Climate Assessment this week and ran with it, embarking on a campaign to convince Americans that climate change is here, not something down the road, but something affecting day-to-day life now.

Article Continued Below

The report, a work by 30 well-respected scientists, four years in the making, pointed to longer, hotter summers, extended periods of unusual heat, heavier rain, wildfires and extreme weather.

While Obama is trying to shake up the American electorate, the waning demand for Alberta bitumen is Keystone’s strike two.

A report released by the Brookings Institution points to a “transformation in the international energy landscape,’’ with the U.S. poised to overtake Saudi Arabia and Russia as the world’s largest oil producer and China surpassing the U.S. as the world’s largest importer.

The authors of the report call it “a stunning change,’’ an energy revolution fuelled by “fracking,’’ a 25 per cent jump in U.S. natural gas production over the past five years, and new technologies.

The same argument is made in Keystone & Beyond, an e-book released Thursday by former New York Times reporter John H. Cushman, who says that even a six-month delay in Keystone approval could render the need for Canadian bitumen irrelevant.

The increase in U.S. oil output in each of the past two years has already outstripped what Keystone can carry. Proven U.S. oil reserves are growing by 15 per cent a year, writes Cushman, now a writer for InsideClimate News.

Cushman traces the genesis of Keystone XL to the early days of the Bush-Dick Cheney administration in 2001, a time when U.S. oil production was thought to have peaked, with 60 per cent of the nation’s oil coming from foreign countries — often unstable or hostile to Washington — and demand was forecast to increase 25 per in the first two decades of this century.

Keystone XL is still dubbed a “no-brainer,’’ by the former president, the exact phrase Harper used in a 2011 interview with Bloomberg News to describe the need for the cross-border pipeline.

To use this phrase today, Cushman writes, “assumes that nothing has changed since the turn of the century, when Bush and Cheney believed domestic oil and gas production would be shrinking, demand for fuel would be growing, and climate change was an uncertain and distant threat.’’

He writes that Harper, like Bush, has deep roots in the oil patch and a climate policy that mirrored Bush: “undermine the science, defer meaningful actions to rein in carbon dioxide emissions and accelerate oil and gas development as quickly as possible.’’

Bush withdrew the U.S. from the Kyoto Accord within weeks of taking office. Harper would officially follow suit almost 11 years later, but the two used almost identical arguments, arguing Kyoto was toothless because it did not include major emitters such as China and India.

But times have changed. As Cushman points out, Bush’s state department approved the first leg of the pipeline, the Keystone, in a report that did not even include the words “global warming” or “greenhouse gases.”

The Enbridge cross-border pipeline Alberta Clipper was put in process by Bush and, when the final okay came in the Obama administration’s first days, the final environmental impact statement drew four public comments.

Keystone has likely become largest and most expensive environmental standoff in U.S. history, Politico reported Thursday. Lobbying on both sides has cost in the tens of millions, with TransCanada spending $6.7 million, the American Petroleum Institute spending $22 million and the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers nearly $15 million.

Obama may yet surprise with approval. The pipeline is supported by a majority of Americans and a similar majority does not see climate change as an immediate challenge.

But there will be no Keystone decision until late this year at the earliest and quite possibly not until after the 2016 presidential election.

This slow rusting of a discredited pipeline means the cabinet decision expected in weeks on the Northern Gateway pipeline from Alberta to the British Columbia coast and Asian markets is the only pipeline game in town right now for the Harper government. And its ultimate success is a long way from a “no-brainer.’’

Tim Harper is a national affairs writer. His column appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday. tharper@thestar.ca Twitter:@nutgraf1

More from the Toronto Star & Partners

LOADING

Copyright owned or licensed by Toronto Star Newspapers Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or distribution of this content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Toronto Star Newspapers Limited and/or its licensors. To order copies of Toronto Star articles, please go to: www.TorontoStarReprints.com